Bug#36607: nscd breaks adduser

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Sun, Apr 25, 1999 at 10:56:16PM +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
> Craig> the follow bug has been seen with 2.1.1-1 and earlier (2.1.1-0.2)
> 
> Craig> looks like a cache/timing problem...nscd hasn't noticed that the group
> Craig> foo exists yet.
> 
> With /etc/nscd.conf you specify a positive and negative time to live
> for entries, e.g.:
> 	enable-cache		passwd		yes
> 	positive-time-to-live	passwd		600 # 10 minutes
> 	negative-time-to-live	passwd		20  # 20 seconds
> 
> You just have to wait those times.  nscd is the "name service cache
> daemon" and you noticed just the correct behaviour of nscd.
> 
> If you don't like this, either don't use nscd, change the time to
> live values to suit your needs, or just wait.

yep, i'm not using nscd. however, it will break debian's adduser script
for everyone who has nscd installed. there is no way to tell adduser to
wait 20 seconds (nor should there be...20 seconds per new user is too long.
new users are often added in batches)

maybe the bug report should be re-assigned to adduser. a simple fix
would be for adduser to run "/etc/init.d/nscd stop" before creating the
user/group and "/etc/init.d/nscd start" afterwards (although there's
probably a better way of doing it). at the least, the problem should be
documented and users told to stop nscd before adding users.

craig

--
craig sanders